Over one billion people use unsafe drinking water and 2.6 billion people (40 out of every 100 people in the whole world) don’t have basic sanitation like toilets or places where they can wash their hands. 

As a result, thousands of children die every day from diseases they get from germs.  Diarrhoea is the biggest killer.

View a photo-essay on Children and Water and Sanitation

Water

Clean water is not readily available all over the world.  We are lucky in New Zealand because all we have to do is turn our taps on and clean water comes out.  We use it for a lot of our daily activities like showering, doing the washing up, doing the laundry, washing the car, flushing the toilet, and going to the swimming pool.  Usually we don’t even give it a second thought when we use water because we think we have lots of it.  All our water is treated with chemicals to make it safe for us to use.

About three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is water but most of it is salt water in oceans or frozen in polar regions.  We can go for two weeks or more without solid food but we will die in about three days if we don’t have any water (or substitutes with a lot of water in them – like fruit).  If we don’t drink enough water it can stop us from being able to concentrate, affect our co-ordination and give us headaches, amongst other things, so we should try to drink at least 2 litres of water a day.  Water is important because it cleans all the poisonous waste from our bodies.

Not having clean water affects people in other ways, especially school-aged girls. People who become sick from unclean water are not always strong enough to work, so they earn less money and families suffer from poverty.

Sanitation

Sanitation is keeping areas clean and hygienic so germs can’t spread and cause disease.  When we talk about sanitation we mean things such as disposing of rubbish properly and getting rid of wastewater. Good sanitation includes a good sewerage system so human waste that can harm and spread disease is gotten rid of.  When people who don’t know much about how germs are spread or where they come from, they also don’t know to follow basic hygiene rules like washing their hands.  Also, in a lot of developing countries the lack of facilities makes things much harder – a home might not have a toilet, a school mightn’t have a washbasin, and there most probably won’t be dustbins in the street for people to throw away their rubbish!

We need sanitation to prevent disease from spreading.  This includes:

• Rubbish collection and getting rid of wastewater.
• Destroying infected plants that spread disease (especially so that they don’t infect other plants/ trees).
• Getting rid of animals that carry lots of disease (like rats), especially from places where people cook or eat food.
• Using chemicals to get rid of germs (contamination) on tools and equipment (especially those used in fields where it’s been in contact with soil which might have faeces in it). 
• Getting rid of human and animal waste (which is why it’s important to clean up your dog’s poo from public spaces!).
• Getting the whole community to respect the environment by not dropping litter everywhere so that fewer germs can breed and spread.
  

Why is hygiene important?      

People also need to follow basic hygiene rules.  Hygiene is very important because more than half of all illnesses and deaths among young children are from germs that get into their mouths through food, water or dirty hands. 

There are lots of simple ways to practice good hygiene:

• Washing hands with soap and water, especially after going to the toilet and also before eating and preparing meals.
• Preparing food in a clean place so that germs don’t get into your food.
• Covering food so that germs don’t creep into it – and refrigerating food to be eaten later when it is cool (something poor people in developing countries can’t do because they don’t have refrigerators).
• Using clean plates, knives, forks and other things we use in developed countries that has contact with the food we eat.
• Using toilets or latrines instead of the outdoors where faeces can leave germs in the soil which people then have contact with.
• In countries where people don’t have access to treated water like we do in New Zealand, it is good to filter and boil water to kill any germs in it.
  

In 1865 a surgeon called Joseph Lister was the first doctor to use antiseptics.  He was worried because a lot of patients had wounds that became infected.  When he heard about germs being in the air he used carbolic acid as an “antiseptic”.  He sprayed the air with it and made sure everything was wiped with it.  The results were clear, far fewer patients were infected.  This was when it was realised that cleanliness is so important.